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Merle Haggard: Learning to Live with Myself

Documentaries

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Music: Country

16/07/2010

BBC Four - Merle Haggard: Learning to Live with Myself

Documentary about one of the true originals of American country music, Merle Haggard.

Documentary tracing the life of one of the true originals of American country music, Merle Haggard, featuring archive footage and interviews with Merle, his family and musicians.

One of the true originals of American country music, 73-year-old Californian-born Merle Haggard has always felt and expressed America's contradictions in his life and his songs. This is the journey of the former Nixon poster boy of Okie from Muskogee renown to the now outspoken critic of the Bush era, as director Gandulf Hennig explores one of the greatest songbooks in American music.

Growing up in a suburb of Bakersfield, California, Haggard lost his father while aged just nine. He turned to a life of vagrancy and crime before seeing Johnny Cash while a San Quentin prison inmate in 1959 and rebuilding his life as a musician, picker and songwriter. Haggard went on to become one of the greatest singer-songwriters in country music, writing songs from the perspective of the working man and the barstool, mixing prison songs like Sing Me Back Home with songs that reflected his confusion at a changing America, such as his biggest hit, 1969's Okie from Muskogee.

Hennig's film is the fruit of three years spent filming with Haggard on the road and at home, recounting the man they call Hag's life as a man and a musician while getting inside the soul of a person who has created his own unique blend of country, western swing, folk and blues. 

Featuring extensive archive footage and interviews with Merle and his family, plus contributions from fellow musicians including Keith Richards, Robert Duvall, Kris Kristofferson, Lucinda Williams and Ray Price.

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